


Classicverse 1.2 A Date to Astonish

by Elspethdixon, Seanchai



Series: Classicverse [2]
Category: Marvel 616
Genre: AU, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-30
Updated: 2008-01-30
Packaged: 2017-10-06 06:58:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elspethdixon/pseuds/Elspethdixon, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seanchai/pseuds/Seanchai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hank and Jan's attempt at a date is less than successful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Classicverse 1.2 A Date to Astonish

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Изумительное свидание](https://archiveofourown.org/works/770239) by [ComradeSoapySoot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ComradeSoapySoot/pseuds/ComradeSoapySoot)



> Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this fanwritten work. We're paid in love, people.
> 
> Authors' Note: AU conceived as a modern retelling of early Avengers.

Late August in New York was breathlessly hot; it hadn't rained in a week, despite the air's humidity, and there wasn't the hint of a breeze to be found. It was hot enough that Jan was beginning to wish she hadn't worn her Wasp costume under her sundress, or that she'd insisted she and Hank sit in the café's air-conditioned interior, and never mind the fact that the street-side table was more romantic. At least her straw sunhat gave her a tiny bit of shade.

The romantic potential seemed to be completely lost on Hank, anyway. Not only had he not dressed up, he hadn't even noticed Jan's sundress, unless commenting that it was very pink counted. Nor had he noticed that she'd gotten a new haircut. He'd noticed the new earrings, but that was only because they were shaped like ladybugs.

The two of them were currently sitting at one of the café's small, round tables, a pair of menus open between them, talking about "work."

"I've been thinking," Hank was saying, staring absently at the menu, "our uniforms are impregnated with Pym particles and shrink or grow with us, right?"

"Right," Jan agreed. "And thank god. It would be much harder to get people to take us seriously if we were naked." She smiled teasingly, inviting Hank to smile back.

"Yes!" Hank nodded, and waved one hand at her. "Your costume shrinks down because it's touching you when you activate the Pym particles. But I've been thinking; if I can find a way to extend the effect of the mass-transfer to a wider area, make it require less bodily contact, then anything that you're touching that's been treated with the particles ought to be able to shrink."

Jan nodded at him, gesturing with one hand for him to go on.

"If I can figure out how to do that, we can take things with us when we shrink! All you'd have to do it grab the object, shrink down while holding it, and then return it to normal size when you grew again." He mimed grabbing something, then raised and lowered one hand to indicate the size changing process. "I might even be able to get an object to remain miniaturized after I've changed back."

That honestly would be pretty useful. One persistent problem with the Wasp form was that, even though she could fly, she was too small to carry much of anything with her. "Or get something to grow and leave it giant-sized?" she suggested, starting to get into the discussion despite the fact that it wasn't what she'd intended to spend their lunch date talking about.

Hank shook his head. "That would be more complicated. Not impossible, but I haven't been able get growing to work as smoothly as shrinking yet."

"I don't know about that," Jan said, giving him a flirtatious smile. "I think you looked pretty good facing off against those gunmen the other day."

"Not as good as Captain America." Hank shook his head once more, this time with what looked like bemusement. "I've never seen anyone move like that. I've studied the super-soldier serum; it enhances your reflexes and endurance, but it doesn't give you any actual super powers beyond a minor healing factor. I never realized how good he was. He's going be a valuable addition to the team."

"Those old black and white news reels and propaganda posters just don't prepare you for the real deal," Jan agreed. "But then, I've always had a thing for tall, blond men," she went on, arching her eyebrows and hoping that Hank would finally get the hint.

"I can be tall," he said, sounding slightly wounded.

Arg! Why was it so hard to hit on this man? "Yes," she said. "And you're even blond." She was about to add, "and not bad-looking, either," when the waiter appeared.

"And what will the young lady be having?" he asked her, pencil poised over his order pad.

"Summer salad," she told him, "with the vinaigrette dressing. And a diet coke." As the waiter turned to Hank, she belatedly remembered that the café's dessert menu included Italian gelato, which would be nice on such a stiflingly hot day. She'd mention it when Hank was done.

Hank ordered himself a sandwich, then added, "and we'd like the blackberry gelato for desert."

"Does that meet with the lady's approval?"

Ice cream wasn't one of Hank's favorite desserts; he had to have asked for it in the hopes that she would like it. Jan beamed at the waiter. "It sounds lovely."

As soon as the man was out of earshot, Hank picked up the conversation again. "He's settling in pretty well, too. I'd thought he'd by overwhelmed be all the modern technology."

Jan shrugged, adjusting her sunhat slightly. "It probably helps that he's got Iron Man to explain how everything works to him. I never knew Iron Man was so well-versed in the way Stark Enterprise's technology operates."

"He should be," Hank said, lips twitching for a moment. "I mean, he designed it." He frowned then, adding, "Well, his boss did, and he probably heard all about it during the design phases, being Tony's bodyguard, and-"

"So you think he's Tony, too," Jan interrupted. She'd had suspicions for a while, ever since Iron Man first appeared on the scene, and they had only gotten stronger after they'd ended up working together. She had never known Tony very well, before he'd begun funding the Avengers, but what she had known had suggested that the chances of him designing something as gratuitously cool as the Iron Man armor and not trying it out himself were minimal. A man who'd built and tested his own race cars wasn't likely to pass up the chance to play around with rocketboots.

She'd had suspicions for a while, but _she_ wasn't the first one who'd voiced them. "And ha," she added, "you broke the no trying to find out each others' identities rule first."

"Some rule," Hank snorted. "Iron Man's the only one of us who has a secret identity. Unless Thor takes off his helmet and poses as a mild-mannered reporter or something, which I doubt."

"Good point. All right, spill. Why do _you_ think he's Tony?"

"You first," Hank returned.

"The two of us spent a significant portion of our childhood being dragged to the same dull society events, where I had to act cute while doddering old businessmen pinched my cheeks. Tony spent the entire year he was nine -- or maybe ten -- hiding in the cloakroom with a bunch of homemade robots. There's no way he'd give up his chance to play real life robot to some hired employee."

Hank nodded. "Makes sense, I guess."

"So how did you guess?"

Hank grinned, and spread his hands out. "Have you ever heard anyone else call me 'Highpockets?'"

"Actually, no." Now that he'd pointed it out, she'd never heard anyone other than Tony refer to Hank that way until Iron Man had called him that during the fight outside Fury's barber shop. "What does that name even mean?"

"You've got me." Hank shrugged. "He came up with it the first time we met, at one of those big scientific conferences. I was demonstrating the results of some of the early Pym particle experiments, and he was showing off some of SE's new miniaturized circuitry patents. I didn't bother to ask why; I was too busy being grateful that I wasn't the youngest or most disliked person there anymore."

"The scientific community doesn't like you because half of them are still jealous over being shown up by a graduate student." They'd been convinced that Hank's mass-transfer theory was unworkable in practice, enough so that two different universities had denied him research grants. They'd changed their tune dramatically after the first time they saw Jan shrink and fly around the room. "What's their problem with him?"

"Five minutes before one of the senior engineers from NASA was going to present, Tony took his scale display model apart and put it back together backwards. And it worked better."

"I bet the two of you were young, naïve, and adorable. You always did look cute in a lab coat."

"Really?" Hank asked, and Jan wasn't sure, but she thought he might be blushing a little. .

"Really," she told him. "Especially all hunched over a chromatograph."

Hank smiled, a sudden breath of wind ruffling his hair. He was blushing, she decided. It was adorable.

And thank god there was finally a breeze.

The wind rustled the fronds of the potted palm by the café door, blew Jan's napkin off the table, and then a sudden, harder gust swept her sunhat off her head, sending it tumbling into the street.

"Hey!" Jan yelped, jumping to her feet and making an unsuccessful grab for the hat. "That was brand new!"

Then she froze. A miniature tornado was racing towards them down the exact center of the street, cars rattling in its path. As Jan watched, an orange moped flipped over and went skidding across the sidewalk, straight into a lamppost.

"That's not natural," Hank said. He was standing too, now, frowning at the mini-twister. "New York city doesn't have the right weather patterns for-"

And then the tornado darted across to their side of the street, coming up onto the sidewalk and bearing down on them, blowing the tablecloth off the empty table in front of them before sending the entire table crashing onto its side.

The tornado halted mere feet away, and its spinning came to a halt to reveal a man in an ugly green costume, wearing a helmet with a pair of upswept fins protruding from either side. "Prepare to meet your match, Avengers," the man proclaimed, "at the hands of…" he paused dramatically, "the Human Top!"

"The Human Top?" Jan repeated. She ought to be fighting already, not standing there gaping at him, but honestly, the Human Top?

"Wouldn't something like The Twister or Tornado have been more dignified?" Hank asked.

The waiter ran out of the café, looking alarmed. "What was that crash? Is anybody-" he took one look at the "Human Top," and broke off mid-sentence. "Nevermind," he said. "I'm calling the cops, mister. Those tables are restaurant property." He turned around and darted back inside.

The Human Top snorted. "As if the cops could catch me."

"They won't need to," Hank said. He took a step toward the man, visibly increasing in height as he did so. "The two of us will take care of that part."

The Human Top laughed, and began spinning, so fast he became a green blur. "You're the one I'm here for, anyway, blondie." Hank, now at twelve feet, threw a punch with one large fist, and the green tornado-shape moved effortlessly out of the way.

Jan shrank down, out of the sundress and shoes, and launched herself into the air. He might be able to spin out of the way of a blow, but he'd find it harder to dodge her sting.

The energy blast caught the spinning blur dead center, and the Human Top came to a staggering halt, facing Jan. "I'll make you pay for that," he yelled, one hand pressed to a small burn on his shoulder. He started spinning again, directly towards her, and the wind generated by his motion blew her back into the café's blue-and-white-striped awning.

Jan grabbed hold of the fabric, bracing herself against the blast of nearly gale-force wind. All right. Flying was clearly out.

She let herself slide down the awning until she was gripping the metal bar that held up the fabric, then let herself grow back to normal size, dropping to the ground.

"Da-amn." The cat call came from inside the tornado-blur. "This job just got a lot more fun. Anything else you want to take off, baby?"

"It's like fighting the Tasmanian Devil," Jan announced, "right down to the incomprehensible grunting and snarling noises."

The Human Top darted toward Hank again, and he swung out of the way just in time, throwing another unsuccessful punch at him. "I'm expecting the drooling to start any time now," he said.

"Joke all ya want," the Human Top snapped. "You haven't even touched me yet."

"We need to slow him down somehow," Hank called to Jan, as the Human Top came at him again, this time too quickly for him to dodge. Hank went tumbling backwards over the flipped-over table, and fell to the ground with a crash, the edges of the tablecloth fluttering around him.

Tablecloth. Jan turned and snatched the cloth off the table she and Hank had been sitting at, edging closer to the Human Top as he loomed over Hank, still spinning..

"You're gonna make me a lot of money, big guy," the Human Top said, and then Jan threw the tablecloth over his head.

The fabric was immediately caught in the Human Top's vortex, whipping around him and tangling his limbs. He slowed his spin until he was clearly visible again, tugging the tablecloth free, and Hank came to his feet and tackled him into the pavement.

"Is this enough touching for you?" he asked, and then slammed the Top's face into the sidewalk, eliciting a dazed grunt from the man.

Jan could hear police sirens in the distance now; the waiter had made good on his threat to call the cops. "The cavalry's on it's way, gorgeous," she said. "Let's see if we can hold him down until they get here."

Hank grew another five or six feet, and shifted his weight until he was sitting on the Top's back. Jan retrieved the tablecloth from the ground and twisted it into a makeshift rope, using it to tie his ankles together.

By the time the police got there, the waiter had brought them both their drinks. On the house.

The date hadn't been a complete failure, Jan decided, as she watched Hank sip ice water from what was now a ridiculously small glass. At least they'd gotten to do something together.

* * *

  
Posting Daniel Cannon's bail cost Hammer more than the man's services were actually worth, and cost even more when the expense inherent in working through intermediaries was added in. However, he couldn't afford to leave Cannon in jail; the longer the city's law enforcement personnel had to question him, and the higher the chances that Cannon would let slip who had hired him.

Cannon was now standing in front of Hammer's desk, his idiot helmet in his hands, attempting to look contrite. "It was an honest mistake, boss. You said the guy was blond. You never said the Avengers had two blond guys. And anyway, this was the one whose picture was in the paper last month."

"The Avengers have three blond men," Hammer snapped. "I had assumed you would be capable of telling which one was Captain America, given that he wears the bloody American flag _on his chest_."

"He was in street clothes. I tailed him from the Mansion, was going to strike when the others weren't around. I didn't know the girl had powers, too. I thought she was just his date."

"Apparently, his date didn't need powers to defeat you. All she required was a tablecloth. You're fired, Cannon. I want you out of the country by tomorrow, and if I hear a whisper that you've spoken my name to anyone, I will be very, very displeased."

Cannon wasn't as stupid as he looked. He left without a word, replacing his helmet as he went.

El Presidente Zemo would be most displeased by this turn of events. El Presidente Zemo would just have to deal with disappointment. Hammer had other things on his plate than capturing Captain America.

The super soldier could wait a little while, until Hammer found a better class of hired super-power to send after him. For the time being, he would turn his attention to the thorn in his own side: Stark Enterprises.

* * *


End file.
